


there are things we can and things we cannot keep

by Lacinia



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dollhouse
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-04 08:37:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4131262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lacinia/pseuds/Lacinia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can find closure or you can make it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Buffy

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “The things we can and cannot keep” by Alli Rogers.
> 
> Warnings: all warnings attendant for Dollhouse's subject matter, but nothing graphic. Brief mentions of violence and child abuse. See end of chapter 2 for (spoilery) warnings for that chapter.
> 
> Takes place late season 2 of Dollhouse, post-series for BtVS. Borrows elements from, but does not ascribe to comics canon.
> 
> I was going through old files when I remembered I'd written this...in 2012...

Faith was dead. Really dead, demon-punched-a-hole-through-her-sternum-dead, not just jumped-into-a-portal-sacrifice-Bambi-and-come-back-dead. Which was why Buffy didn’t believe it when a Slayer swore up and down that she’d seen Faith, right as rain, swimming in the Pacific Ocean at dawn.

She didn’t believe her—not even a little—until other reports started to filter in. Faith, speeding down the PCH. Faith, singing for suits at a pricey cocktail bar. Faith, again and again and again, all in the greater L.A. area, each time with a different name, each time with a different story. It didn’t make any sense. Faith was not alive, okay? Faith was not alive.

They dug up the body, just to be sure. Buffy threw up.

 

  
It had been a solid year since Buffy had had any communication with Faith that wasn’t a teleconference or a written report. They’d been busy, what with training the newbies and running an army. Still, it hit her hard when she heard that she’d died. It’s stupid, she thought, and locked her jaw and squeezed her eyes shut. The hell with it, she thought, a second later, and started to all-out cry. It’s stupid, because Faith was fast and fierce and very, very good: she deserved to die in a fiery blaze of glory, or better yet, ninety-seven and bitter, with her lungs, heart, and liver all failing from too much smoke and liquor. It shouldn’t have been this way.

It rained for Faith’s funeral, just like in a movie. They never had anything but clear skies when she lived in Sunnydale, no matter how many people died. At Faith’s funeral it was just Buffy and Angel, them and her Slayers and the minister. Everyone else had been too far away, too busy. Those were just words. Buffy had known what they meant: that they hadn’t liked her and they hadn’t forgiven her. In the whole world, did Faith only have Buffy, Angel, and her students to give a damn?

During the service the priest threw enough words like “hero” and “sacrifice” around to let Buffy know he’d never met the dead girl. She’d wanted to laugh and cry at the bald hypocrisy of it all. Faith would never have called herself a hero. 

If Faith were here…she’d smiled. If Faith had been there she’d be smoking, cursing, and hitting on the preacher all in the same breath. Faith had never cried at funerals, either, just stood silently in her street clothes with her face stone-hard. In her grief she dared the world, she screamed at it, but she never passively cried. Not like Buffy.

Buffy didn’t know why she’d jumped in front of that Slayer, taking the fatal hit meant for another. 

Oh, who was she kidding? She knew why.

My girls, Faith called them, all the troubled once-Potentials. Maybe she hadn’t deserved it, but Buffy had given her a huge responsibility—she’d told her not just to train them, but to watch and protect them. Faith was a lot of things, but as it turned out one thing she’d never been was the kind of girl to break a promise. She’d protected them. 

 

  
If there is anything that Buffy has learned, it is that there are a lot of weird things in this world. Shape-shifters, demons, robot duplicates: things that wouldn’t need Faith’s body to look like her. Buffy has Shannon, the leader of the Los Angeles squad, open an investigation. The truth, when they find it, is both more and less strange than they imagined. It’s not magic.

It’s technology.

The girl who looks like Faith but can’t possibly be belongs to an entity known as the Dollhouse, a highly illegal black-market organization which rents out human beings with made-to-order memories and personalities. As for who or what not-Faith is Shannon can’t tell her. Her report, neatly typed up and faxed to Buffy, suggests a course of action that is both deeply risky and coolly logical. Shannon feels that the most effective way to infiltrate the Dollhouse would be to pose as a client. It’s a plan of action that would place the undercover operative into the complete power of a large and powerful organization that is highly motivated to keep its secrets. It’s a risk Buffy can’t ask anyone else to take, so she does it herself. 

 

  
Buffy’s more nervous than she has been in a long while, but manages to hold her façade of cool and collected. Her hair is pulled back in a severe bun and she’s wearing tiny, frameless glasses and a pinstriped suit. Her three-inch heels are straight from Rome, and they make small, precise clicking noises against the floor as she walks decisively down the hall, quickly enough that Giles (similarly disguised, though naturally sans heels) and Boyd, the house security guy, have to half-trot to keep up. When they reach the office Boyd opens the door for them and follows them in. He remains standing by the door, unobtrusive, while Buffy and Giles meet for the very first time Ms. Adelle DeWitt, the manager of the L.A. Dollhouse and the woman ultimately responsible for the recruitment and well-being of its Dolls. The madam. 

DeWitt stands when they enter, but neither she nor Buffy attempt to shake hands. She offers the polite invitation for them to sit, which Buffy accepts while Giles remains standing. 

“I understand you’re here to arrange an engagement, Ms. Summers.” 

Giles’ wandering gaze snaps to Buffy, who does nothing more than purse her lips. After a tense moment, Giles sighs. “I take it our masquerade failed to take you in?” he asks.

DeWitt smiles. “You’ll find that the Dollhouse is quite powerful, Mr. Giles. We aren’t easily fooled.”

“Then you know why we’re here,” Buffy says, flatly.

“You hold an interest in one of our Actives,” DeWitt answers.

“Her name is Faith,” Buffy says, a little too harshly.

DeWitt raises her eyebrows. “I’m afraid she’s not the girl you once knew. We call her Echo.”

“And who was she before you erased her?” Giles asks, the condemnation in his words almost inaudible. 

DeWitt switches her gaze back to Giles, eyes wide like she’s got no guilt to hide. “A volunteer, as you’ll find all our Actives are. Her name was Caroline.”

“Right,” Buffy says, voice dripping with chipper disbelief. “And she just happens to have Faith’s face.”

DeWitt picks up a file from her desk. “Your Miss Lehane was born December 14th, 1982. Followed, seventeen minutes later, by an identical twin sister.”

Buffy shakes her head. “No way,” she says. “If Faith had had a sister, we would have known about it.”

“It’s quite possible she didn’t know. Both girls were removed from their home at age four and were eventually adopted into separate households.”

Buffy twists her mouth like she doesn’t believe a goddamn word, she but doesn’t object to the other woman’s story. “I want to see her,” she says.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. If you wish to see our Echo, the sister of your Faith, you may, of course, contract her like any other client.”

“Ms. DeWitt,” Giles interrupts. “If your Echo is our Faith, we owe her our assistance and protection. Do you really want to stand against us?”

She doesn’t react, just pours green tea into small ceramic cups for the three of them. Buffy abstains. “Mr. Giles,” DeWitt says finally, “the Dollhouse does not react well to threats. The safety of the Actives is my primary concern, and I assure you I am quite willing to take extreme measures to safeguard it.”

“Then we have that in common,” he says. “Just how badly do you want to see who would win?”

DeWitt purses her lips. She doesn’t like threats, except when she gives them. She hates losing even more. “Allow me to make you a deal. I will let you see Echo, and offer you proof that she is not your Faith. In exchange, the Slayer’s Council will not interfere with the business of the Dollhouse.”

“I give you my word,” Giles answers.

“I don’t care about your promises. I want hers,” DeWitt says, looking at Buffy, briefly forgotten in this conversation. DeWitt, briefed before the meeting, knew that Rupert Giles used kindness like other men did smiles. His demeanor was comforting, but it was ultimately a lie. Rupert Giles was ruthless in a clean, pure way, and you could believe in him, but you could never trust him. He might look like authority, but Buffy Summers was the real leader, and she was honest. 

Buffy looks at her with wide green eyes. “I promise,” she says, and there such an utter lack of guile in her eyes that DeWitt, who doesn’t really trust anyone, doesn’t worry about relying on her word alone.

“Very well. Follow me,” she says, and leads them into the private elevator. As it descends, she tells them, “You have five minutes.” The elevator dings and the doors slide open, and Giles and Buffy don’t say anything, because their eyes and minds are a little too occupied. Outside the elevator doors is a huge atrium filled with people dressed like they’re headed to yoga. The place is…sunny. There are plants, and a pool. It has a little waterfall that makes a pleasant burbling noise. It’s all much more cheerful than Buffy expected, when she heard that the girl with Faith’s face was one of who-knows-how-many programmable slaves, sold out to whoever had enough cash to pay. 

Adelle doesn’t wait for them to recover from momentary surprise, and strides forward to stop a dark-haired man. “Where is Echo?” she asks, and the aide consults his clipboard.

“She’s in art class, ma’am,” he answers, and DeWitt thanks him with swift politeness and leads them to a small room off the atrium. 

Then she’s right there, and Buffy’s heart stops. Her fellow Slayer, back when there were just the two. Her frequent enemy and occasional friend, and she’s sitting right in front of her, like she never died at all. Buffy killed Faith once, buried her years later, and now her twin, this Caroline, is right here, like none of that ever happened.

“Faith,” she says, whisper-soft. She doesn’t intend to speak but the name just slips out. 

“Echo,” DeWitt says, and the girl looks up. “Please say hello to Ms. Summers.”

“Hello,” Echo says, looking up from her painting, and her voice is breathy like Faith’s never was. She looks at Buffy without a single flash of recognition, without a single emotion. Faith always ran hot, went from screaming rage to transcendent joy to suicidal depression with little middle ground. She never looked blank. 

“Echo,” Buffy says, her voice strong now. Echo smiles at Buffy, smiles wide, like she’s holding nothing back. Faith held everything back, hell, it wasn’t even until she died that most people learned her last name. 

“I’m Echo,” she says. “Who are you?” 

Buffy bites her lip. “Doesn’t matter,” she says, because she gets it now, knows without any kind of test that it isn’t Faith staring out of those empty eyes. Whoever used to be there is long gone, scooped out like pumpkin guts, and all that’s left is the shell. Does that mean she’s all carved up? Buffy hates metaphors.

“Are we quite finished here?” DeWitt asks. 

Buffy nods. DeWitt seizes one of Echo’s hands and dips her fingers in blue paint before pressing them to a blank page. She shakes it dry before handing it to Giles. Even identical twins have different fingerprints; it’s good proof.

“Echo, why don’t you go to the pool?” DeWitt asks, and Echo nods, smiles, stands to leave. Buffy reaches out and grabs her by the arm before she knows what she’s doing. “Wait,” she says, and she’s not sure why.

In a moment the air is tense and dangerous again. Boyd grabs her elbow, a second too slow—he doesn’t have Slayer reflexes, after all. She scowls up at him. _As if you could stop me_ , she thinks. Giles glares a threat at DeWitt, the only person that hasn’t shifted into danger-mode. 

Echo breaks the pressure by putting her hand over Buffy’s. Buffy feels herself melt, exhausted. Even after all the hate, all the shit that happened between them, Buffy loved Faith, and seeing her twin like this is breaking her heart. 

“Let’s go, Giles,” she says, and she leaves and works very hard not to look back. 

 

  
The fingerprints come back with a great big negative, and that should be the end of it, but she just can’t stop thinking about that girl. She obsesses, day, night, when she’s supposed to be sleeping, when she’s supposed to be slaying. She thinks at first she wants to rescue her. She’s Faith’s sister, after all, doesn’t Buffy owe her? But it’s been a long time since Buffy’s been able to delude herself: that isn’t what she wants at all. What she wants is the same thing she has wanted since the first time she found out that Faith had a doppelganger, and the company that owned her could make a person into anyone you wanted, even someone imaginary, even somebody who—

Adelle DeWitt’s words sound in her head. _You may, of course, contract her like any other client._

Buffy feels too old for self-delusion, she knows what she wants, even knows how to get it. She knows that it’s very, very wrong. 

She walks into the Dollhouse and talks to DeWitt with her knowing eyes. “Fantasy is my business,” Adelle tells her, like she doesn’t judge at all. That’s okay. Buffy’s doing plenty of judging on her own. 

 

  
Topher is dancing by himself to loud music when Boyd enters. Boyd doesn’t know whether he’s being intentionally ignored or if Topher’s simply caught up in his own thoughts and the bass beat. He turns the music off. 

“What?” Topher asks, like a whiny teenager in interrupted angst. Boyd holds up a file. “There’s a client coming to see you.”

“Whoah, whoah. Back up, big man. I don’t deal with clients. In fact, I believe the exact words DeWitt used were ‘not allowed.’”

“This client is special” Boyd tells him. 

“They’re all _special_ ” Topher protests. “Senators, CEOs, military officers. Do you know we have an astronaut client? That man has seen space.”

“This one’s different. No fee.” Topher remains unconvinced, so with a sigh Boyd slides a photograph out from the file. 

“Hm.” Topher pretends otherwise, but Boyd can see he’s intrigued. “Which Active is she engaging?”

“Echo,” Boyd answers, and his distaste for Topher only magnifies at the overgrown adolescent’s response. “It’s a closure case,” he clarifies. 

“Sure it is,” Topher says, and Boyd knows he’s won his acquiescence. “Fine. Send Miss--,” he turns the picture over to see the name, written in DeWitt’s familiar hand, “Summers over and I’ll do the interviews. But don’t think this isn’t a sacrifice. I’m a busy, busy man!”

 

  
Buffy doesn’t have the kind of cash the Dollhouse’s clients usually pay. 

“You’ve lived an extraordinary life, Ms. Summers,” DeWitt tells her. “I’m sure we’ll be able to come up with something.”

Buffy has slain monsters, she’s fallen in love, and she’s traveled the world. She’s seen and done things most people couldn’t even imagine, and it is with those memories that she buys the thing only the Dollhouse can give her—a chance to say goodbye to Faith. 

In doing so, DeWitt doesn’t need to say that she’s handed the Dollhouse the keys for the destruction of the Slayer’s Council, should Buffy renegade on her side of their deal.

Buffy pays up front. If she feels a tremor of fear when she lies back in the chair, she suppresses it. “This is going to hurt,” Topher tells her. At least, whatever else, he isn’t a liar. 

Scientist though he might be, Topher doesn’t believe his results when he sees them. “That can’t be right,” he mutters to himself, and twists the data. He makes sure her brain is organized the same as everyone else’s and he’s looking at honest, true memories, not dreams or books or movies. “You’ve lived an exciting life,” Ivy tells her, looking over her boss’ shoulder. 

“Not the word I would use,” she responded. She’s glum, having forced to relive her most vivid memories. Melancholy, she watches as he sorts her memories. “You can know all about my life, just from looking at this?” she asks, staring at the screens full of numbers and graphs. 

“The broad strokes,” Ivy replies, as Topher ignores them. “I know you’ve lost people,” she says, pointing to a red spot. “I know you’ve fallen in love,” (she gestures towards a broad line) “that you’re fearless,” a table of numerical values “and that you loved Faith very much.”

“What tells you that?” Buffy asks, like any of scans and projections and numbers mean anything to her. 

“You did,” Ivy says, and smiles. Buffy’s too tired to bristle, because they’ve got her life on these computers and they’re allowed to think they know her.

 

  
“That was subtle.”

“What?”

“‘I understand you and accept you,’” Topher paraphrases in a mocking, sing-song voice.

“Shut up,” Ivy says, and blushes. 

“Hey, it’s fine with me. Just let me suggest that next time you decide to hit on our hot-yet-crazy female client, do it in a bikini and a poolful of jello.”

Topher realizes that Ivy had only studied the screens (filled with dense, complicated data) for a few minutes before noticing that Buffy had slept with that girl, Satsu. He sent her for a juice box, before she gets any better at his job. 

 

  
Buffy spends hours with Topher. She tells him everything she knows about Faith, all the little details she’s gathered about her past as well as all the twists of their history. She talks about her accent, her favorite lipstick, the nicknames she had for everyone. She tells him about the way she fought, fast and reckless, just the same way she lived her life. She describes what Faith wore, how she walked, the pattern of her words. 

She wants it to be perfect, because she knows she’ll never get a second chance. It’s sick and it’s wrong, she tells herself, but in the end it doesn’t make any difference at all; she doesn’t stop the thing that she’s set in motion.

Buffy comes to watch Topher work. She doesn’t know why—she doesn’t care for his company, in fact, she actively dislikes him. She hates the Dollhouse, hates DeWitt, even hates Boyd, because she knows he can’t be nearly as kind as he seems. 

She remembers—suddenly, and she doesn’t know why she didn’t make this connection before—that horrible little thing they called the Buffybot, how much she hated the flawed imitation of herself. No doubt Faith would be as disgusted by her actions as she was by Spike’s. 

But she pushes that thought aside—she’s done with hating herself over this. Yes, it’s bad of her, maybe even evil, but she’s done with guilt.

No, she’s here to watch. She doesn’t understand a bit of it, but she keeps coming. She doesn’t understand how making a person could be as simple as plagiarizing a paper—a simple act of copying and pasting from the right sources. Every once in a while Topher will get bored of ignoring her and talk. He tells her that constructing an imprint isn’t just science; it’s also an art. You have to understand people, know what makes them tick in order to build one that will do what you want. To Faith’s imprint Topher adds a dash from a Boston native—that’s for the accent. A young Californian murderess provides memories of the penal system. Some of Caroline’s subconscious is added, so that her body doesn’t feel foreign. A rescued little boy provides the history of abuse, and more than a healthy dose of Buffy herself is added to the mix. “You put me in?” she asked, surprised. 

“Shared history,” Ivy says, fresh back from an Oreo run. “It’ll make her closer to the original.”

Buffy’s uncomfortable at the thought that Faith will have so much of her in her, but it makes sense. They were always more alike than they pretended. 

The wait was long. It took weeks to build an accurate reconstruction of a complex and detailed personality. Buffy had to wait months before there was an opening in Echo’s schedule. She marked her calendar and watched the days count down. She waited. 

Buffy thought long and hard about what she would do with her last, perfect day with Faith. It all came down to that first question Topher had asked her: “What do you want?” At the time all she had done was answer “Faith,” but here, months later, Buffy still wasn’t sure what she really wanted from Faith. The only thing that came to mind was…forgiveness. Which was stupid, of course. Faith was the one that had done wrong, what with the betrayal, kidnapping, and body-snatching. But all Buffy could think was that maybe it wouldn’t have happened if she’d been a better friend. Stupid. Faith had come pre-broken, somebody had said, though Buffy couldn’t remember who. All the friends in the world couldn’t have fixed her. 

(Later, Buffy remembers. It was Faith who had called herself broken.)

 

  
The night before Buffy lays awake in bed, wondering if she’s sure. Her own experiences with resurrection tell her it’s best to let the dead lie.

She picks up the phone, wondering if she should tell them she’s changed her mind.

She thinks about how she never got to talk to Faith, tell her she forgave her.

She thinks, and she does nothing and she says nothing, trapped in a web of hating and wanting, until the clock’s ticking hand brings it to the time. Miles away, the man named Topher hits a single key, the last in the sequence to finish prepping the chair and initialize download. It’s the key that, with a zap of energy and a hum, turns Echo into something else. 

 

  
Faith’s very first memory is of being held. It’s one of her rare memories of love: being slowly rocked in somebody’s warm arms, their breath in her hair. After that hazy, tactile recollection come all the rest, the thousands of blurry and vivid and happy and sad and repressed and treasured and important and insignificant and painful and wonderful and everything else memories of her whole life. But down under that huge pile of data is that singular remembrance, and it’s somehow the most important. 

It’s the memory they pour in first. It pushes into Echo’s brain with such violence that she gasps in sudden pain. For a second everything stops, and she remembers how that felt. Just for a second, Echo remembers Faith. Then Faith hits her for real, the thousands of memories coming too quickly to be analyzed or experienced. Faith overtakes her in a flood, inundates her so completely she can’t see, can’t even breathe. 

Then Echo is gone, and in her place sits Faith, the Vampire Slayer.


	2. Faith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end of chapter for warnings.

Faith leaps from the chair before it’s truly upright. “C’mon, Boyd,” she calls out, already halfway to the wardrobe room where she left her clothes. Treatment done, she still has to get to the florist--the _good_ florist--before they close (no mean feat with L.A. traffic). She’ll deliver the flowers tomorrow morning. 

Faith is carrying an armful of daisies (last year it was lilac) when she runs into Buffy. Practically runs into her, so that she almost drops the flowers from sheer shock. Los Angeles is almost 500 square miles, has 3.8 million people, and somehow she’s managed to run into a girl that doesn’t even live here anymore. 

“Buffy,” she says, surprised. 

“I thought that was my dream,” Buffy says, which would make absolutely no sense, except that Faith dreamed three nights ago about standing in the middle of L.A. with the streets all filled with flowers. No apocalypse, no monsters, just the hint that this is where she should be. It was enough of a hint to make Faith move her annual trip forward two months. 

Guess she wasn’t the only one to get a hint. 

Slayers still share dreams, weird overlaps of prophesy that are the inevitable result of a world with a thousand Chosen Ones. But there’s a sense to them, a texture that differentiates a message overheard and one received by the intended addressee. 

Buffy and Faith compare notes. Each girl had gotten the same dream on the same night, but no other Slayers had reported a similar vision. Faith was forced to conclude that whatever the message, it was meant for them alone. 

Streets with no cars, no concrete, just filled from sidewalk to sidewalk with hundreds of thousands of living blossoms—lilies, carnations, bluebells, baby’s breath, dozens of types that Faith didn’t recognize. If it’s a sign of apocalypse, it’s like no apocalypse Faith has ever seen. 

She’s still turning it over in her mind, grimly worried that the message must mean danger if Buffy too has been summoned, when the two of them run into a group of half a dozen vamps attacking a young couple. 

For a startled second, they don’t know who is more surprised: the vampires interrupted mid-meal, the humans unexpectedly rescued, or the world’s oldest Slayers, finding them all. 

When it comes to killing vampires, there is no one in the world better at it than the two of them. They are strong and fast, and very, very practiced. Despite the years gone by, they remember deep in their bones, what it feels like to fight together, and they do it again, now, with perfect ease. A broken crate provides shards suitable for staking: one girl holds a vampire while the other stabs. 

A perfect team, a perfect fight. No collateral damage. 

Buffy is flushed with adrenaline and grinning widely. “Huh. I remember when that was harder.” 

Faith can’t help smiling back. It isn’t nothing, a fight where you don’t have to worry one of your girls isn’t going to get herself killed. 

Buffy leaves Faith at a Starbucks to run back to her hotel. She wants to clean up and make a few calls. When she returns, she tells Faith that they have people investigating, but that they should stay in L.A., where their dreams led them. That wasn’t Faith’s plan, she was supposed to be on a plane by this time tomorrow. 

It’s her pattern. L.A. is where she grieves everyone, from Joyce Summers to Angel’s crew to her Watcher that died in Boston. She lays flowers for those that don’t have graves, practices saying goodbye to people she never properly mourned. Half wistfully, and half with relief, she gives the flowers away. She’ll grab another bouquet tomorrow; it’s too personal a ritual to share with another. 

Buffy is frankly horrified that Faith has been to L.A. multiple times and yet never seen the sights. She wants to show Faith everything, from the Walk of Fame and the Chinese theatre to the Hollywood sign and Santa Monica pier. Faith is good-natured but confused, not understanding Buffy’s enthusiasm. It’s been a long time since they were friends, years since Buffy wanted to just hang out. 

They eat dinner at the kind of fancy restaurant that always makes Faith feel low-class and out of place. During the meal, Buffy babbles about the events of the recent months, gossips with an enthusiasm Faith can only half-share. Buffy always forgets that her friends don’t care for Faith and never really forgave her. Faith, for her part, can’t befriend those whose presence reminds her of her very worse. She can’t be at ease in the company of people that distrust her so thoroughly.

Buffy wants old betrayals to have faded; she wants them all to be the friends they never were. So she chats, with cheer, and Faith listens, bemused, to news of Xander’s new girlfriend, Dawn’s latest academic achievement, the new Slayers still being found in the far corners of the world. Buffy talks about her circle with such enthusiasm that Faith can almost pretend she is a part of it, not exiled to the pariah squad, in charge of those Slayers no one else would take. 

After dinner, they head out for drinks, and it’s almost like old times. Faith dances, easily convinces a laughing Buffy to join her. They half-yell to hear each other over ear-splitting music, and they ignore everyone else in the club. They don’t go on patrol. L.A. has its own Slayers, and anyways, they’re on vacation, sort of. It’s a perk of life post-Sunnydale that their nights off are now acceptable and not illicit. 

They leave way before last call, which makes Faith feel old, honestly. Time was it would take more than the late hour to pry her away from a party. But Buffy yawns and tries to hide it, so they leave. She scowls as she takes note of where they are. Her hotel is halfway across this huge, sprawled-out city, and she considers the likelihood of finding a cab and ponders the size of the bill. 

“Just stay with me,” Buffy says. “I’ve got a double.”

“Are you sure?” Faith asks. With the jet lag it’s not even all that late, she wouldn’t mind walking if she had to. 

Buffy acts like she’s being ridiculous. “Of course. I’m basically around the corner.”

They talk all the way back to the hotel. Buffy asks her about her Slayers, and Faith gives her a series of funny anecdotes: times missions went comically awry, their escalating feud with their next-door neighbor, the kind of absurd trouble only teenage girls with superpowers can get themselves into. She very purposely leaves out the bad stories, like the reasons they’re all with her. She’s got ex-junkies, professional car thieves, gang members, all the flavors of bad girl. Too unstable to be left alone, too dangerous to be handled by any of the newbies, they’d been collected into Faith’s New York squad. Buffy had wanted them someplace quiet. There’s a Hellmouth in a small town in Michigan that needs watching, apparently, but Faith had flat out refused. “There’s no town in the world small enough to stop someone from getting into trouble. Might as well have us somewhere that won’t kill me with boredom.” Buffy had known better than even to bring up Boston. 

Once they’re back at the hotel Faith falls asleep almost instantly, as usual. She’s always considered it a talent of hers. In the morning Buffy acts funny: runs her hands through her hair and talks too quickly. When Faith says goodbye Buffy darts in and gives her a warm hug. There are the tiniest of tears in the corners of her eyes. Faith shakes off her odd behavior and walks out into the sun and warmth, heading towards the bakery she’d spotted earlier. She feels like she would kill for a really great bagel. 

Faith doesn’t have any of those nifty enhanced senses, but she hadn’t survived this long without developing a nose for danger. 

She doesn’t pay much attention to the first suit, and ignores the second, but by lucky number three she realized those weren’t businessman vibes she was getting, they were cop vibes. She puts on her sunglasses and pretends not to notice Mr. Stoic sitting behind the wheel of his dark sedan. She counts the number of times she spots a black van, can only conclude that they are closing in.

Faith was always more about confrontation than patience. She ducks into an office building and steps into an elevator, on the lookout for whoever follows. At the last second, a hand darts between the closing doors and waves to open them.

Somehow, in all her wariness, she’d failed to notice she had another shadow.

“B.,” she says, suddenly breathless. 

Buffy looks harried: she steps into the elevator and punches the ‘DOORS CLOSE’ button twice. But she waits until the doors close to speak. “We have to go,” she says, still staring straight towards the doors, all business despite her mystifying behavior.

Faith hesitates. “I’ve got a tail,” she explains.

“Yes,” Buffy agrees. “Wanna shake it?” she asks, holding up a vial swirling with grey smoke. 

“Red doing smoke bombs now?” Faith asks. Last she heard, Willow was up on some astral plane; it seems a little beneath her level. 

“Even better: teleportation. Hold my hand.” Faith does, suppressing a shiver, and then there’s the sound of glass breaking and the world dissolves. Willow must be a cool hand at the magic, Faith figures, because it doesn’t feel like she moves at all, more like the world rearranges around her, the elevator sounds of machinery and air conditioning and tinny music fading into the crash of surf and a lonely seagull’s cry. A chill settles onto her bare arms, and she looks up into a grey sky. An honest-to-god castle looms out of the middle ground. Faith hasn’t been to the Scotland base since the Slayer army was brand-new, but it’s not the kind of place you forget the look of. 

Faith breathes out California air, takes in some of the colder stuff. 

“So, what’s the game plan, B.?” she asks. New enemies make her nervous. She likes to know who wants her dead. 

Buffy snaps her phone open. “Hold on, I’ve got to make some calls,” she says, and almost literally runs off. Faith tries to shrug off the sting of the evasion.

Instead of going inside and inevitably facing awkward greetings with dozens of Slayers and Watchers whose names she can barely remember, Faith elects to stand on the rocky beach and watch the sun set over the water. 

The waves crash, the water gathers and crashes again. She’s so melancholy, lately. She half misses old Faith, the girl that never paused for a second to think. Old Faith never got caught up in grief or regret. 

_We change or we die_ , she reminds herself. Old Faith tried her damnest to get herself killed half a dozen times. She couldn’t take the world, would surely be dead if she hadn’t evolved. Faith hasn’t tried to kill herself in five years. It’s been three years since she got so drunk she blacked out, one since she smoked her last cigarette. Halfway to becoming a fucking angel, she told her therapist. 

She tries to sound like life isn’t so exhausting, like she didn’t lose her spark along with the worse of her vices. 

It is with some relief that the ring of her cell phone interrupts her thoughts. 

“Faith,” she answers.

“Would you like a treatment?” asks Boyd’s familiar voice.

“Yeah. Yeah, that’d be great. Where are you?”

“I’ll send someone to pick you up. Do you trust me?”

“With my life.”

 

  
Helicopters are just as loud as Faith remembers, and twice as windy. Her hair is whipping all around, getting in her eyes, and she struggles to understand the shouted words of the guy that gives her a hand up. The strength of his accent isn’t making it any easier. 

She’s trying to ask how long the treatment is going to take when she notices Buffy is running towards them, apparently headless of the fact that they’re taking off. Faith mimes holding a phone to her ear, trying to convey that she’ll explain later, but Buffy leaps for the helicopter, grabbing the landing gear mid-air. 

The pilot shouts and the craft tips as he attempts to land or shake her off. Faith grabs for a handhold, and her escort, strapped in, reaches for a gun Faith had noticed but discounted. She trusts Boyd’s friend or employee, after all. Besides, it’s not like any normal guy with a gun poises any danger, not at close quarters. But trust only gets you so far, and when he points the gun at Buffy, trying to pull herself into the helicopter despite the way it’s tumbling about, she knocks him out with a single blow, no regret. 

“Land this thing,” she tells the pilot, and when he hesitates and reaches towards his own stashed weapon she grabs him by the throat. “Land,” she repeats.

She gives Buffy a hand up, pulls her into the cabin. As soon as they kiss ground Buffy hits the pilot—a swift, violent gesture that knocks him instantly unconscious. The engines die down on their own, and as the sound fades Faith pushes Buffy out onto the ground with just as much sudden violence as Buffy used to disable the man in the helicopter. Faith has spent years in therapy. Before that, it was years in prison. She has clawed her way up from murder and despair, she has broken and remade herself in a better image, but she’s not a saint, and violence is still how she talks. 

As Buffy tumbles onto the concrete, Faith steps down, cool and collected.

“What’s your problem?” she asks.

“Those guys are bad news,” she cries out. 

“Those guys are my friends,” Faith says. “Employees of friends,” she corrects herself with a shrug.

“There are things you don’t know,” the other girl protests. 

“So explain.”

Buffy opens her mouth, looks distressed. “Come inside,” she says. “I can explain everything, I promise.”

Faith hesitates, torn between her natural impulse to refuse, fight, storm off, and the rational inclination to hear her out. She should give Buffy the benefit of the doubt; the girl is practically sweating earnestness. But she is fighting rage, burning rage that Buffy is once again keeping secrets from her and sticking her nose in her business. 

“Fine,” she says. “Tell me what I don’t know.”

 

  
Faith listens with an impassive face. 

“I don’t know who fed you this story,” she says finally. “Or why you believed them. But I am me, not a replica. Not a fake.”

“I know it must feel…overwhelming,” Giles says. “But I can attest that--.”

“You can attest _nothing_ , G-man. I remember, I feel--.”

“That can be faked,” Buffy says. “I’m sorry.”

“What was it?” Faith asks. “Why did you decide that my life wasn’t screwed up enough, that you all had to get together and convince me that my whole life is imaginary?”

“You’re not a Slayer,” Buffy says. 

Faith stands up, angry. “B., I am _the_ Slayer. I’ve been a Slayer since I was fifteen, and I was a Slayer when you were in the ground, and I will be a Slayer until I fucking die.”

Buffy stands up, too, but she’s calm. “So show me.”

Faith turns around angrily, and hits the wooden door. But the door doesn’t shatter. Instead, her hand feels like it breaks. Faith makes a little sound, sheer surprise, and cradles her fist to her chest. She looks up at Buffy and Giles with eyes that are hurt and shocked, and for the first time afraid.

“Caroline was never a Slayer,” Giles says, gently. 

“Caroline wasn’t real,” Faith says. “I never had a sister,” she finishes, but she says it like she’s trying to convince herself. 

“You died,” Buffy says, and Faith can’t stand the sympathy in her voice. “We can call your girls in New York, but they’ll just tell you the same thing.”

Faith puts a hand to her face, doesn’t cry. “Fine,” she says. “Fine, I’m imaginary. Thanks for bringing me back, guys. It’s been peaches.” When she leaves the room Buffy follows.

“Wait!”

In the hallway, Faith rounds on her. “What!” she asks. “You just told me everything I am is a lie, do you just want me to be okay with that?”

Buffy backs off. “I’m sorry, Faith. I just—I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes that just doesn’t cut it.”

 

  
An hour later Faith is at the local pub, throwing back shots one after another in the kind of behavior she hasn’t indulged in for months. It’s what she did on the really bad days. 

The liquor is just starting to affect the tight ball of anger in the center of her chest when she feels a twinge in her stomach. She ignores it, at first. 

Twenty-five minutes later, it’s near-unbearable. Faith, through long practice, doesn’t scream. The girl who’d been sitting in the corner by herself quietly (dark eyes, bleached hair) gets up, helps Faith to her car. She must be a Slayer, not a Watcher, because she half-carries Faith with ease. 

“They gave me something,” she hisses out between gritted teeth.

“Nobody put anything in your drink,” the girl assures her, and Faith can’t muster the energy to explain, _no, before_.

Once they get to the castle the Slayer yells for Topis, who Faith recalls is the house doctor, Swedish or something. In the transit time Faith has started to sweat. Her heart rate is up, she feels weak, woozy, unable to concentrate. She can’t remember the last time she was so sick. 

Buffy arrives in a dead run. “What happened?” she yells, and the girl starts to explain, only to have to start over when the doctor arrives. By then, a good group of Slayers have gathered, drawn by the noise, and Faith finds herself searching for familiar faces. She doesn’t recognize most of them, and wishes, suddenly, stupidly, for her New York squad. She wants know if they were okay without her.

The doctor checks her heart and temperature. He asks half a dozen questions in a rapid, worried voice, and she answers as best she can. Her words come slow, her tongue feels sluggish.

They take her to the infirmary, where the doctor gives her a shot of something that slows her heart, dulls the pain in her abdomen. He tells Buffy he’s running tests as quickly as he can, but he needs to know what Faith was poisoned with. His stopgap won’t last.

It’s then, when Faith is trying to pull herself from drug-induced confusion, and Buffy is talking in increasingly high-pitched tones to the doctor, that Sylvia, a Slayer Faith had worked with in Cleveland, comes in with her hand over the mouthpiece of a phone receiver, saying the Dollhouse is calling. 

In the startled silence Faith pushes herself up and hoarsely asks for the phone. 

“Faith, I presume,” a crisp British voice says.

“That’s me,” she answers, without irony. 

“And are you enjoying our gift?”

“It’s swell. Did you keep the receipt?” She doesn’t know this woman, but her voice drags at the edges of her memory. 

“I’d like you to come back to Los Angeles, Faith.”

“And then you erase me, right? I’d rather die here.” 

“And which would Caroline prefer, do you think?”

Faith doesn’t say anything.

“Caroline, your sister. You’re in her body right now. Am I correct in saying you remember her? She remembers you. You know, you are the only family she has, in the entire world. Are you willing to let her die just so you can stay yourself?”

“She’s already dead,” Faith says, bitter. “She died the second she let you erase her. Doesn’t matter if she’s walking around, talking. You murdered her a long while ago.”

“Incorrect,” Adelle says. “Caroline signed a contract with us, one we intend to honor. After five years of service, she will be restored. With a healthy bank account, I should add.”

“Bullshit,” Faith sighs. “You own her, you aren’t just going to let her go.”

“Disbelieve us if you like. But know that if you refuse to return you ensure that Caroline has no chance of ever living again. You will, in effect, have killed her.”

Faith hangs up, then throws the phone across the room.. “Get me a plane ticket,” she says to the room at large. 

 

  
Buffy accompanies her to the airport, refusing to let her go to her death on her own. Faith keeps her silence until the terminal. Waiting for the plane, Faith asks, without looking at Buffy, “Why’d you do it?”

“I don’t know,” Buffy answers. “Couldn’t let you go, I guess.”

“Maybe you should have tried harder.”

“I’d do it again,” Buffy says.

Faith sighs. “I’m not sorry either. I like being alive. Dying sucks.” She gives Buffy a wan smile. “Guess we could both talk about that.”

“Don’t go back,” Buffy asks. “Stay here. We can fix this, cure you, just give us time.”

“She was right about one thing,” Faith says. “That DeWitt lady. I owe Caroline. I heard something about you jumping into a portal to save your sister. Can’t I do the same?”

“This isn’t the same,” Buffy protests.

“It is. I died. I should have stayed dead. You, Willow, Angel, I’ve got no doubt at all that you could save me. But you can’t save Caroline. I live again, she dies? That’s just wrong. I’m done with murdering.”

“This is wrong.”

“No. It’s the natural order. How’d I die?” she asks, realizing she’d never learned.

“Demon.”

“‘Course. That’s good. Would suck if it was like, a car. Point is, B., that I had my time. Might not have been so wise with it, but I made my choices. No one else should have to live with them.”

“There has to be another way!”

“There isn’t.” She looks at Buffy now, gives her a clear stare with those brown eyes. “You respected me, right? Back when I was alive. Maybe you can let me make my own decisions,” she suggests.

Buffy racks her hand through her hair, out of arguments, out of ideas. She doesn’t want to accept the other girl’s death, not again, but she’s beginning to realize she doesn’t have any other option. 

They call for boarding, and Faith rises from her seat. 

“Don’t go,” Buffy begs. “Just don’t go.”

Faith smiles at her, sad. There are tears in her eyes, and the other girl realizes she’s never, ever seen her cry. Faith hugs her, and lets go when Buffy doesn’t. 

Faith opens her mouth to speak, but her throat is tight. She realizes she doesn’t have any last words, this time. Instead she just reaches forward again and kisses her first on the forehead, and then, holding her face between her hands and looking at her for a long moment, on her lips.

Faith touches her with agonizing softness. When Buffy opens her eyes she’s already turning away; by the time she can press a hand to herself she’s halfway gone.

Faith walks into the jet bridge and vanishes. None of Buffy’s power can pull her back, and there’s nothing to do but finally break into full-body sobs, headless of the crowd around her. In a minute, Sylvia comes over, gives her a handkerchief and leads her back to the car. 

For Faith, the crowded plane with its complaining children and crying babies feels strange, unreal in its sheer normality. Don’t these people know that they’re sitting next to an artificial girl? Shouldn’t they be upset that she’s dying?

Despite herself, Faith aches for sympathy. She wants someone to hold her hand, someone to be with her so she’s not alone with her thoughts. She wishes she hadn’t made everyone stay behind. 

A ten hour flight would be miserable under any circumstances, but it was especially insufferable for Faith. Faith had never tolerated airplanes well: they made her feel cramped and claustrophobic. She paced the aisle between the seats, snapped at the flight attendants.

Any other time, Faith had a destination to comfort her. It’s hard to look forward to L.A. this time.

Boyd is waiting for her at the gate. He smiles, but she can’t be polite today.

They drive in silence, back towards the building Faith remembers from little more than a day ago. The van parks in an underground garage, and Boyd gets out and motions towards the elevator. Faith stays in her seat a second too long. Her eyes look large, she looks young. Boyd feels a pang. Though he’s taken Echo’s imprints to be wiped a hundred times, none of them have ever known what they were facing.

The elevator descends, and Faith and Boyd step out onto the lobby. She hadn’t thought it was odd, the first time she was here. It seemed normal, an underground spa/clinic. Her programming talking, she supposes. It feels strange now, but then everything feels strange, surreal and too-bright.

She walks up the stairs, to the lab. Topher is waiting for her at the chair. He smiles, his hands are behind his back. 

Faith wants something she’s never wanted before: somebody to rescue her. She’s more afraid than she thought she would be.

She closes her eyes, thinks of Caroline, the little girl she can barely remember. She remembers her crying. Faith used to think Caroline was an imaginary friend, or a hallucination, or a mirror-caught reflection. Even now, her memories of her childhood are muddled, confused by vivid Slayer dreams. Did she get lost in a hedge maze? Was that her, crying in the dark, or did it happen to some other girl?

She hadn’t known Caroline was real.

She imagines Caroline, her double, her only family. She hasn’t been any kind of sister to that girl. She can change that now. She can make up for everything. 

“Not very impressive,” she says, her eyes on the chair.

“Well, believe me, lady, you haven’t seen the best part yet.”

She nods. “All I’ve gotta do is sit down?”

“Just lie back and think of England,” Topher replies, and is surprised when she responds with a lopsided smile. 

Faith sits down in the chair. She settles herself, lies back and grips the armrests. “Okay,” she says. “Let’s do this thing.”

Topher initiates the wiping sequence. The chair ripples with energy, sends electrical impulses deep into Faith’s brain, triggering the Active architecture hidden in her subconscious. The chair drains away her memories, all the things that made her who she is. It takes away the things that she loved, the things she wanted. Everything she accomplished, every terrible act she committed. It all disappears, like it was never even there at all. Like she never even mattered.

All alone, in the chair, is a half-empty girl. 

“Did I fall asleep?” Echo asks.

“For a little while,” Topher reassures her. 

“Shall I go now?”

“If you like,” Topher says, turning to face the screens. 

Echo leaves the lab at a placid walk. When she arrives at Dr. Saunders’s office, Mike is receiving care. Echo waits her turn with the programmed patience of an Active. “And how are you?” Dr. Saunders asks, with little interest. 

“Five by five,” Echo replies, smiling so wide her dimples show.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: same as previous, plus illness/poisoning.
> 
> I appreciate everybody that reads this through, especially since it's not exactly relevant anymore. This fic owes a spiritual debt to lettered's (fantastic!) "Hope has Wings", and is dedicated to universally nice Buffy F/F fandom.


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